Julia Bolton Holloway,
Hermit of the Holy Family, is English, taught in America for
many years, taking early retirement to enter the Anglican
convent of her school in Sussex as a nun, remaining there for
four years. Fleeing evil in the Church of England she came to
Italy where she had earlier studied Dante and read other
medieval manuscripts in the Tuscan and Vatican libraries and
archives. She next lived for four years as a hermit in
Montebeni, in one un-heated room, walking each morning, in the
winter in the dark, to Mass with don Divo Barsotti. During
this time she became Catholic and completed the definitive
edition of the Showing of Love, the book written by
the medieval woman theologian Julian of Norwich. She now lives
in the 'English Cemetery' with a library on spirituality,
thanks to the Swiss Evangelical Church. Julian had similarly
in the fourteenth century in Norwich lived in a graveyard and
had taught from her anchorhold in the midst of the city.

In the four years in the
cloister amidst the books of my convent of which I was the
librarian, and then in those further four years in the
solitude of a hermitage, still with books, though far fewer, I
found the space in which to change my life, centring it on the
knowledge of God and myself, as Catherine of Siena and Julian
of Norwich had written. I found amongst these books, my own
and those in my convent, a 'sacred conversation' of voices in
dialogue across the centuries, of women, of men, writing in
the love of God and neighbour, which today I try to share with
everyone. At the same time there was despair, amongst the
young, amongst the poor, amongst those traumatized by bombs in
Nairobi in Kenya, in Omagh in Ireland. So I took up the study
of the effects of trauma upon individuals, seeking to
understand the evil I had discovered and experienced in my
convent, in my family, in the churches, in the monasteries.
Amongst the olive groves of Ontignano I found a simple cure
for the body, mind and soul, I discovered the gift that
blessed olive leaves could bring to us. The Bishop of Fiesole,
an Olivetan priest and don Divo Barsotti blessed these leaves,
before their being sent to Africa, to Ireland, to Australia,
to America.

Walter Hilton writing to an
anchoress and Augustine Baker writing to English nuns again
and again repeated this prayer of the pilgrim which became my
own:

I have noughtI am noughtI seek nought but sweetJesus in Jerusalem.

Julian of Norwich was
influenced by Walter Hilton. She wrote about a vision in her
book in which she saw a little thing the quantity of a hazel
nut in the palm of her hand, and heard God explain that it was
all that was created, and that he loved it. For he despises
nothing that he has created. She explained that it seems so
small because it is the Creation seen in the presence of the
Creator. Thus she takes up the vision of a disciple of St
Benedict and discussed in turn by St Gregory to his disciple
Peter where St Benedict was in prayer his disciple seeing the
whole universe became one sunbeam, and St Gregory explaining
that the cosmos seems so because it is the Creation in the
presence of the Creator.

In the magnificent library
of my Anglican convent I gave several lectures for Hastings
Quakers on the Friends of God of the Middle Ages, on the
mystics such as Meister Eckhardt, John Tauler, Henry Suso, Jan
van Ruusbroec, Marguerite Porete, Birgitta of Sweden,
Catherine of Siena, and above all, Julian of Norwich. Amongst
the library readers was a Jewish woman scholar, another a
Catholic, both studying theology at King's College in London.
All these people spontaneously decided to be a group called
'Godfriends', such as those amongst the Dominicans in the
Middle Ages, putting God first in our lives. In English, even,
the word 'Godfriends' puts the word 'God' first. We found
happiness. There were no barriers between us. We thus began a
sacred conversation that was to continue. Now this group
converses through the Internet. This resulted in an enormous
website, with monastic and eremitic Rules, with the lifes of
saintly women, such as St Agnes and St Cecilia, St Teresa of
Avila, St Therese of Lisieux and Edith Stein (St Teresa
Benedicta of the Cross) and Mother Teresa of Calcutta, with
the writings of women contemplatives, such as Marguerite
Porete, Birgitta of Sweden, Catherine of Siena and Julian of
Norwich. Each week I send them an e-mail letter about my life
in Italy, about its simplicity, about Mass at the Santissima
Annunziata, about dawn in that piazza it shares with the
Ospedale degli Innocenti, and about the Mass for the Poor, the
Repubblica di San Procolo, every Sunday in the Badia. I
explain to them my ministry amongst the Roma who so love
postcards of Fra Angelico and who want to learn to read and
write. Godfriends are scattered throughout the world: in
Australia, Alaska, Africa, Scandinavia, England, Ireland,
Iceland, Japan, Russia and Jerusalem - and the Jerusalem
Godfriend is Jewish. We find in this spirituality, in our
human pilgrimage to God, that there are no frontiers, no
divisions. The whole cosmos becomes the electric light of the
screen, the single sunbeam.

Why
evil? That is the question Julian of Norwich asked in
the fourteenth century in England. Benedictine, Catholic, with
the knowledge of Hebrew and perhaps, like St Teresa of Avila
and Edith Stein, herself of Jewish origin, in her sacred
conversation with God, Julian spoke of evil. Those who do evil
cease to exist and to be remembered, their evil being
forgotten because evil only destroys, it does not create, she
says. And Julian spoke of a great secret kept by God that he
would reveal at the end of time. Perhaps this secret is that
time would then go backwards, all evil be undone, and we
return to being Adam and Eve in the garden of Terestrial
Paradise?

Dante and Julian spoke of
the Trinty where the Father is Power, the Son, Wisdom, the
Holy Spirit, Love. Power is only God's, it does not belong to
us, likewise, Wisdom, only Love can be shared and
reciprocated. In that cold hermitage I came to see that evil
is the thirst for power, a desire to be like God, a thirst
that is never sated, that produces bombs, this evil that
causes war, that brought the Holocaust to Jews and Roma, that
causes the poverty of the rest through the wealth of the
powerful and few. Viktor Frankl affirmed that Freud and Adler
erred, that it is not sex or power or wealth that brings
happiness. It is, instead, hope, meaning, Creation. I have a
computer, I have borrowed a digital camera. But I find that
the most precious things are the transparency of water, the
sunlight amidst the tombs of the images I capture, the Roma
baby of eight days old I baptized in my cell St Lawrence's Day
in 2002 when the rain seemed that it would never cease. Now I
teach his mother, Hedera, who is Romanian Orthodox, how to
read and write. We make cradles in our workshop to sell to
permit Hedera and her family, of three children, to have a
house in Romania. I am a hermit, but take care of babies,
families, in this world! I am a strange scholar with a cradle
in my library!

The Gospel brings the
joyful announcement, the good news, of the love of the poor,
of One born in a stable, dead on a cross. Then St Lawrence
spoke of Rome's poor as the greatest treasure the Church has.
Fra Angelico, who had Lorenzo the Magnificent as patron,
painted for the Pope, St Lawrence in the act of giving in alms
to the poor the riches of the Church. Thus I have found that
the Rom in our city, the poorest, are most precious; our
lepers, despised, yet having such a strong sense of the family
and such a deep piety. Hedera, Romanian Orthodox, nursing her
child, would not drink milk on Friday, nor use soap: on
Sundays she is scandalized that we work. I have visited
families in the Rom camps, in particular a family with ten
children and five adults, one of the mothers widowed: having
lost their house in Kosovo they live in the poorest room, but
in peace and with great civility. I have met the Head of the
camp twice: he, who runs a bar without selling alcohol, is
Sufi and speaks with wisdom and simplicity. 'Our life' he
says, ' is only a pilgrimage in this world'. 'We share', he
says, 'the same God'.

Just as water, light, the
flowers in spring, are so fine, so beautiful, so did I
discover in my cell that the Gospel is so, the good news of
the Love of littleness. Evil seeks to destroy all that. But
without water and without light we could not survive, nor even
could the stars and suns of the shapes of the flowers. I think
that the Power, Wisdom and Love of the Gospel, in a paradox,
is found amongst lepers, amongst women, amongst Samaritans,
amongs the ill, amongs babies, amongst the Roma, amongst the
poor who lack power. Those who have power seek to suppress
these, wanting to throw away babies as one throws away their
disposable diapers, and get rid of such miserable human beings
as they do their junked cars. When I was a student at Berkeley
and professor at Princeton, I too had that thirst for power,
for wealth. No more. I found that with poverty and chastity
came happiness and love everywhere. Today I prefer a bicycle
to a car, I prefer to use my hands, sewing my clothes, doing
carpentry, building the bookshelves of the library and cradles
for babies: today I love this more than acquiring possessions.
St Benedict and St Columbanus wrote in their Rules of the
importance of the balance between work, study, prayer, as like
the harmonious use of the body, the mind, and the soul, for a
healthy and happy life. It is crucial that a hermit be
self-reliant: instead of being a consumer, she must be useful
to society. The Fathers of the Desert to support themselves
wove baskets. In the Middle Ages hermits often built and
maintained bridges for pilgrims and merchants. Above all, it
is necessary to discipline oneself, with daily Mass, the
Offices of Prayer, the Vows, loving God with all one's heart
and with Him all His Creation, our neighbour who is ourselves.

I believe that with the
simplicity of a gift, with a 'sacred conversation', in this
sharing of small things, of an olive leaf, of a hazelnut, of a
Fra Angelico postcard, we can restore Paradise. In giving a
Fra Angelico to a Rom who kisses the image with joy, moved by
its beauty and holiness, we can live together as if in the
heavenly Jerusalem. We remember how St Monica and St
Augustine, St Jerome and St Paul, St Benedict and St
Scholastica talked all night long of the things of God . . .
It is a 'sacred conversation' across the centuries, woven into
our own, that never ends. When Jacob spent the night at Bethel
(House of God) he had a vision: a ladder leaning against the
earth reaching to the heavens upon which angels ascended and
descended. I find that even solitude is a paradox and that
within this solitude are all the poor, all the saints, all
Creation, and above all the Creator, whom they reflect. In
this solitude, this simplicity, is God, first, as we say in
English, amongst His 'Godfriends'. All of you are, in Julian's
words, 'Godfriends', the most beloved and the most appreciated
friends of God.